Police Took No Action in Reported Attack by Elliot Rodger in 2013

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Santa Barbara authorities were told nearly a year before Elliot Rodger’s deadly rampage that he had tried to push several people off a 10-foot ledge during a party in Isla Vista, according to records made public on Wednesday.

Elliot Rodger, 22, said he would “destroy” women and expressed his loneliness in a YouTube video posted shortly before a May 23, 2014, shooting rampage near UC Santa Barabara.

A witness reported the incident to deputies while they were investigating claims by Rodger that he was attacked and called a homophobic slur that night.

The Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department concluded that Rodger was the aggressor in the altercations. But for reasons that are unclear, they dropped the case without further investigating the accusations against Rodger.

The report offers more details on the July 20, 2013, altercation, the first of three times deputies contacted Rodger in the months leading up to his May 23 attack. But reports also raise more questions about those interactions, and about information deputies had when they conducted a welfare check on Rodger just three weeks before he killed six UCSB students.